Glider outlanding in high crops

[@BrunoVassel]

Wow!!! Thanks for sharing. It looked like your wings were really level with the field. Crazy how quickly it grabbed you. Pretty impressive. Glad you ship was ok. Cheers.

[@thekedder]

I think I saw a bump on the ground with the corner of my eye just before it happened. But can't spot it on the video anymore. Anyways, yeah, that was surprising!

[@BrunoVassel]

Again - thanks for sharing! This video has really bothered me since I first saw it. Not the ground loop actually. It is the last turn. Please take a look at how much the last turn was skidded. The yaw string is way far to the inside of the turn. It looked like the glider could enter a spin at any second. Not trying to criticize at all - just concerned. What do you think?

[@thekedder]

Bruno Vassel, I will not argue, the whole approach wasn't perfectly executed. The altitude for tight maneuvering was too low, and the turn was not coordinated well, as you noticed. I switched from "competition mode" too late. That wasn't really apparent when I was in a glider. This video helped me to realize that.

[@BrunoVassel]

Andrey Lebedev thanks for taking my comments the right way. I have also held on too long before committing to land. Look up my video titled something like glider landing in cotton field and you will see I am in complete denial till the bitter end. Cheers, thanks for sharing, and DON'T use too much inside rudder! 🙂👍

[@robertmizek3315]

Bruno Vassel, good catch. That’s a good lesson for everyone.

[@rcbif101]

Good visual of what the crop can do. Even though you slowed it all the way down and kept it mostly level, one wing still caught and spun you. Glad it's in one piece!

[@louisdresse8650]

Your 180 degree U turn before final was to me surprising and possibly not the only option available if I may respectfully make a comment.

[@mikemorgulis9657]

thanks for posting! I've landed in full height barley a few times, didn't ground loop the first time, second time I had a short ground loop at end of the roll-out. The first time the field looked like freshly harvested straw... until the wind blew across it when I was on short final, and then it was apparent that it was full height. Bruno was right about his assessment, I also would have set up my circuit earlier and put the wheel down sooner to fully configure so that I could fly undistracted all the way to the end. We practice sterile launches and landings, meaning that we don't adjust the knobs on any devices until we're off tow or the glider has stopped moving on the ground. Looking at a cellphone while approaching a land-out field is a huge distraction, the time should have been spent assessing the crops. If it's important, they'll call back. :-) The phone call was probably from a duct-cleaning service.

[@MisterIvyMike]

The vario sounds good for aerobatics... 00:36 "Honey what will we do this evening?" "Oh, you grab the trailer, take a ride of about 200 km and bring me and the plane back home..." "What?... dood... dood... dood..." 😂 Nice to see an outlanding in high crops and how quick it can turns ugly. Glad evereything was ok. Have seen the same a while ago with an DG-200 and one wing was damaged. Not so bad, but a case for repair.

[@SnaxMuppet]

Whatever happened to turning finals on an outlanding at 400Ft? Very lucky to get away with that without a stall/spin IMO. Glad he was OK.

[@nlzdxl]

Wow - situation with less options - seems you have worked positive on your karma before that one. thanks for sharing, thumbs up :)

[@johnc6919]

That was a perfect demonstration of how to do just about everything wrong. Glad you are OK, assume the glider sustained some damage.

[@offshoretinker]

I too wasn't keen on the low turn but thought you had it nailed. Glad you and your ship OK.

[@berndkorthaus5082]

My impression is that you decided for another field very late, because the last turn was at a very low height. That can be dangerous.

[@LongboatAline]

Would have fooled me, too - from the visuals I thought that strip might be the best choice, as well. Difficult to avoid the wing catching when the growth isn't uniform enough to keep level. The last turn seemed a bit scary to me, though - from the video It felt pretty low and slow, but that's video.

[@vintagedgglass2544]

Excellent video and I have learned so much from it! Thank you for posting and please continue to post (good flights too!) I would only wish you gave us some immediate postflight commentary but that's selfish I know. It must have been frustrating. It seems you looped a full 180 before your tail landed which was a blessing. LESSON TO US: EXPECT A GROUND LOOP UNLESS IT'S PLOWED

[@vitrydl8614]

I was outlanding to meadow and felt safe but grass were owergrown over leading edges of wings. I have experienced 180° ground loop, last 3m I went backwards. Discus was OK.

[@TheMikeeeCO]

I had a scary first solo in a 2-33 just last week. During aerotow we went through a huge rotor vortex and I got nervous and disconnected from the tow plane. While flying back to the airport at pattern altitude I encountered a lot of wind shear. I flew my downwind leg in a headwind causing me to lose a lot of altitude by pitching down to keep my airspeed high . I flew a very uncoordinated base to final and overshot the runway and then bounced the landing three times. Scariest day of my life, but I’m lucky to have kept flying the plane and kept my airspeed up. A video of my solo is here kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpWbdqaAjKtgq6c

[@TomKirkman1]

It all looks smooth and safe from above.

[@stimmie7647]

I would have chosen that field too

[@tomjdesigns1280]

on touch down wing was nicely leveled but still you got ground loop sort off - thanks for sharing

[@kurtkesters6043]

well, if the the crop is higher on one side, or laying in the opposite direction, it can be leven ol it wants... defentatly looked like a harversed wheat field from the footage.

At 0:52 you are low and looking at the mobile phone? Shouldn't your focus be on the job at hand. Field selections. The 5 S's. Pre landing checks? Bruno was right in this comment about the last turn. If that had resulted in a spin you would have not had enough height to recover. I learned a lot from this. Many thanks for sharing.

[@thekedder]

Just wondering what would be your reaction if phone would start ringing in that situation? Let it ring and distract you on final, or hang up the call?

@@thekedder I turn the phone off to preserve battery power in case I do outland and need to make the phone call urgently. Turn off the phone is the correct answer. Bruno Vassal also commented on the video. Bruno has a video in which he answers a call. After he shares that he was told that his friend has just died. Can you imagine a call to inform you that your wife, girlfriend or parents had just died. I guess that really could mess up your concentration. Bruno kept it together and landed safely. Just the phone ringing obviously messed up your concentration hence the last skidding turn that almost resulted in a spin. Everybody reacts differently to any kind of news.

[@thekedder]

​@ Yep, "turn off the phone is the correct answer", just to some other question, not mine. If you look carefully, you'll see that I did not answer the call, so the tragic news example does not really apply here. I merely got rid of the distraction, the only reasonable thing one could do in that situation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that I did everything perfectly and I admit my mistakes. But for some reason the phone in this video attracts most of the attention, even though it wasn't really a big deal :)

[@henriksoderstrom8551]

Ah, familiar sight: An ASW20 like the one I used to have :).

[@pylon500]

Have to admit, it looked mowed to me.

[@lautoka63]

Yes. We have trough and hump drained fields, where you land along the hump (never across). I landed in what looked like a perfectly flat field and nearly rattled my teeth out - by landing along the low trough where the cows had pugged it all up over winter. It came as a nasty surprise, so I have sympathy for this pilot (let's not talk about his circuit).

[@markcourtney7251]

Bad airmanship all round sorry, looked like a late field selection, too many turns down low, pre landing checked done way too late, and that bloody phone! Distraction at that height is a killer! Your grip on the stick looked as tight as someone holding a sledgehammer. I hope you had that aircraft checked thoroughly a ground loop like that puts huge strain on the tail.

[@MardkoMBR]

Impressionnant et instructif. Je ne vois pas comment peut-on faire mieux. Merci pour le partage et heureux de savoir que votre ASW20 n'a pas eu mal !

[@beavhow318]

Sérieux ? Y'a toutes les erreurs possibles dan cette vidéo, surtout dans un asw20.... Le champ choisi est haut, éviter les landings, sortir le train en dernier virage à très forte inclinaison raz le sol, sans jamais être symétrique, meilleur moyen de partir en autorotation... Et zero utilisation des AF...

[@cloudstreets1396]

Maybe the guy on the phone had a better field for you.

[@spicyeddict]

Good Job. Why not land in green?

[@billmoffitt7411]

What happens afterwards? Does a tow plane come or do you truck in a trailer? Does the farmer get compensated for any loss?

[@pops9190]

Dude, you should've answered the phone, It could've been somebody that found A thermal And they were holding onto it for you.

[@GlidingTobster]

Ah, the S80's "roll wings level" bleep at the end; being about as useful as it normally is!

[@thekedder]

I believe that was a "stall" bleep. I configured it at 70 kmh.

[@cabanford]

Did you get to meet the farmer & his shot gun? 😬😬😬

[@alanmaxted6215]

Why didn’t you answer the phone .....?

[@RossNixon]

A lot of friction from that crop, or perhaps the dirt wasn't flat enough.

[@BenHirashima]

Is that a Yota Phone with the e-ink display? Looks like it's running XCSoar. Cool.

[@thekedder]

Yep, works very well!

[@JohnCinOz1]

It’s hard to say what else you could have done wrong in this video. Fiddling with your phone during the landing sequence really set a high bar for stupidity but then you added a high bank turn with airbrakes extended at low level into an obviously high crop: that took the poor flying to whole new level. Lucky, is about the best that can be said.

[@johndoe-rp3hz]

Yeah,I know. When I saw that I thought WTF ??? And NOT TURNING OFF THAT stupid "Smart" phone BEFORE you took off was a huge error.

[@guyroberts5251]

That phone !

[@hearsejr]

How much damage did you do? I have not flown a sailplane enough to make an off runway landing yet, but I'm expecting it to happen Everytime I leave the ground. I fear my landing will be a lot more .... Well let's say interestingly more exciting. Lol.

[@thekedder]

There was no damage I could detect. Usually tail suffers from this kind of spins, but in this case tail looks like to be high enough during decceleration. The main wheel took the main load while moving sideways through the dirt, but it seems to be ok too.

[@hearsejr]

Andrey Lebedev I'm glad to hear everything is good.

[@beavhow318]

I didn't know the use of Airbrakes was fully optional at landing...

[@thekedder]

With landing flaps and long enough field airbrakes are pretty much optional.

[@Abra089]

With deep crops you need to land at the minimum controllable airspeed, so that you don’t enter the crops with excess energy. This helps reduce the tendency to group loop and definitely makes it less violent. Easier on your neck, and the glider. I have always closed spoilers fully in the flare to get as slow as I can before getting into crops.

[@user-sf9pq5ox7w]

well, thanks for sharing. amazing you were dabbling with your cell phone. landing pattern was not too good- you could have spun out.

[@swaika777]

what glider is this? looks like ASW20?

[@thekedder]

swaika777 it is ASW-20 indeed. Initial (A) version.

[@mokka1115]

Uff, was the plane alright?

[@Antonio-tl8tu]

Though it is already 4 years old but that might be the worst (non lethal) outlanding I've seen so far... there's not much left to do wrong

[@GAMINGTEENAGER]

you clearly haven't seen a lot of outlanding videos haha

[@cloudstreets1396]

Was the tail still attached?

[@Olivio30031983]

top gun?

[@julianday]

Shouldn’t have been playing with the phone when lining up to land.

[@pilote768]

Impressive ! Thank for the share

[@stanislouse4168]

yeah, real impressive.

[@uwerothe6017]

playing with phone instead having good look out

[@adamciszewski1598]

Хвост повредил?

[@thekedder]

Нет, все целое.

[@robertmacdonald8519]

Probably not a good idea to check your phone on approach to landing out, just sayin.

[@thekedder]

Would you rather keep it ringing on final instead?

[@robertmacdonald8519]

I guess that would have been distracting as well.

[@cemerson]

@@thekedder yes

[@go2cloudbase]

what is the serial # of your 20? ;)

[@thekedder]

20602, why? :)

[@go2cloudbase]

I was just giving you s*@t, as in if you ever put it up for sale I might have second thoughts.. Just razzing you though.

[@thekedder]

Haha, you'd miss an awesome glider if you'd think for too long :) But don't worry, it's not on sale anytime soon :)

[@pauljanssens4449]

Switch your phone off when you fly, this habit of yours will end up killing you

[@beavhow318]

I totally agree! The god damned phone is ringing? Forget it! Man! You are outlanding, there are better things to do like taking care about your turn coordination, especially on an asw20! Landing gear down as soon as you are in your outlanding procedure, not during a high bank angle final turn... If the choice of the field to land in is indeed difficult, everything else here is the example of what one shall absolutely avoid!

[@Abra089]

Yeah man, his phone should be off, and even the radio when outlanding. Lots to say about this one obviously, but the two biggest offenses are the low 180 to final, and playing with the phone.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

@@Abra089 "Radio should be off while outlanding" what? No? Suppose things had gone slightly more wrong - the pilot, potentially injured and with their phone launched to goodness knows where, would rely on the radio to call for an ambulance

[@Abra089]

@@RoamingAdhocrat an out landing is the time to be laser focused. A radio call asking how you are doing or anything else could be severely distracting. No, I and many others say, turn it off for an outlanding. I don’t think it would be impossible to turn it back on in the event of a mishap.

[@moontan91]

oh my goodness !

[@henrikgormsen1020]

Until the last few feet it looked harvested to me two !!! Fuck you were cheated...

[@stanislouse4168]

Two mistakes. Attending to your phone on final and not flying the plane. And, having it float free in the cabin.

[@henrikcarlsen1881]

That landing could have been better flown and planned (IMHO)

[@adammorkus]

Oh :(

[@andrewpreston4127]

NIce ground loop.

[@electriceyeslide5959]

That low turn was very dumb. Could have crashed that glider straight into the ground.

[@123-o8d5r]

lol